(Styack n has often seen the sight)

Or at the chapel-door stand centry:

In peaked hoods and mantles tarnish'd,
Sour visages, enough to scare ye,
High dames of honour once, that garnish'd
The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary.

The Peeress comes.

The audience stare,

And doff their hats with due submission:

She curtsies, as she takes the chair,

To all the people of condition.

The Bard, with many an artful fib,
Had in imagination fenc'd him,
Disprov'd the arguments of Squib, o

And all that Groom p could urge against him.

But soon his rhetoric forsook him,

When he the solemn hall had seen;

A sudden fit of ague shook him,

He stood as mute as poor Macleane. q

n The Housekeeper.

• Groom of the Chamber.

p The Steward.

• A famous highwaymanhanged the week before.

Yet something he was heard to mutter,
"How in the Park beneath an old tree,

"(Without design to hurt the butter,
"Or any malice to the poultry,)
"He once or twice had penn'd a sonnet;
*" Yet hop'd, that he might save his bacon :
"Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
" He ne'er was for a conj'rer taken."

The ghostly prudes with hagged face
Already had condemn'd the sinner.
My Lady rose, and with a grace-
She smil'd, and bid him come to dinner.
"Jesu-Maria! Madam Bridget,

"Why, what can the Viscountess mean? (Cried the square-hoods in woeful fidget) "The times are alter'd quite and clean!

"Decorum's turn'd to mere civility;
"Her air and all her manners show it.
"Commend me to her affability!

"Speak to a Commoner and Poet!"

[Here 500 stanzas are lost.]

And so God save our noble King,

And guard us from long-winded Lubbers,

That to eternity would sing,

And keep my Lady from her Rubbers.

K

ELEGY

WRITTEN IN

A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD,

[Originally called by Mr. Gray, "Stanzas written in a Country Church-Yard."

The following Analysis of this Poem, which has been often said to be without a Plan, was sketched by the late Mr. Scott, of Amwell;

" The poet very graphically describes the process of "a calm evening, in which he introduces himself " wandering near a Country Church-yard. From "the sight of the place, he takes occasion, by a few " natural and simple, but important circumstances, "to characterize the life of a peasant: and ob"serves, that it need not be disdained by ambition " or grandeur, whose most distinguished superior" ities must all terminate in the grave. He then " proceeds to intimate, that it was not from any na"tural inequality of abilities, but from want of ac"quired advantages, as riches, knowledge, &c. "that the humble race, whose place of interment " he was surveying, did not rank with the most ce"lebrated of their cotemporaries. The same im "pediments, however, which obstructed their "course to greatness, he thinks also precluded " their progress in vice; and, consequently, that

"what was lost in one respect was gained in the "other. From this reflection he not unnaturally " proceeds to remark on that universality of regard " to the deceased, which produces, even for these "humble villagers, a commemoration of their past "existence. Then turning his attention to himself, " he indulges the idea of his being commemorated " in the same manner, and introduces an Epitaph " which he supposes to be employed on the same "occasion."

See Scott's Critical Essays, 8υο. 1785.]

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

r The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day. - squilla di lontano

Che paia 'l giorno pianger, che si muore.

Dante, Purgat. l. 8.